The Way You Grow

I can't even tell you how much this kid makes my heart sing.  The older he gets, the more I fall in love with him.  He is such an interesting person - full of sweetness to melt your heart, and a temper to raise your eyebrows.

He thrived in Kindergarten last year.  And made some awesome friends along the way.

Graduation day was kind of hard for him.  It was hard for me, too.  Geez, you'd think they'd remember a mama's heart when they chose Taylor Swift's song Never Grow Up to have these little guys do their graduation walk to.  Have you heard it?  Google it.  You will cry.  At least through the first bit.

I never figured out exactly why Miles struggled through it, but he spent the whole day with a stoic look on his face that just looked sad to me.

Maybe he was tired.  Maybe he was picking up my 'Change is Hard' vibe even though I was trying to present the 'Happy Graduation Day!' vibe.  

I'm not sure.  But regardless of the reasons for our melancholy state, we made it through with a few extra hugs.  And even managed some genuine smiles along the way.

Change is hard, no matter how you look at it.  But the good thing about change in relation to Miles is that I am so darn excited to see who he grows up to be.  I think it will be powerful.

Carson was easy this year.  No graduation ceremony, just another awesome year in the middle of elementary school.  He grew so much during second grade - not really in stature, but in ability.  His reading took off like a rocket, and it was so fun to see him find even more confidence in himself.  I absolutely love this boy.

Halfway through the year he decided he wanted to cut his beautiful, long, blonde hair.  I swear he grew two years over that night.    

He worked hard and made it on the A-B Honor roll - we were so proud of him!  He was fake-exhausted by the end of the year, though.

What a great kid - sensitive and so kind... 

And McKenzie.  My McKenzie.  She broke my heart too, growin' up and graduating from elementary school and all.

The night before her graduation, she asked if we could curl her hair.  And she was so, so excited when it unrolled the next morning like this.

I hope she always, always feels as beautiful as she does right now.
Because she is such a beautiful person.

Do you remember that feeling as a kid that came as you were searching crowds for your mom?

And then you spotted her, and all the sudden your heart relaxed and you felt ready and confident for whatever it was you were there for?  I do.  And now, here I am, somehow in my own mother's position... and oh how I love to be that anchor of comfort.

She did a fabulous job of walking up on the stage to receive her awards.  She didn't trip or anything. She's one smart cookie, you know.  Straight A's and the highest reading score in the entire school.  By a lot.  Basically, she's amazing.

Amazing, and beautiful, and responsible, and a hard worker.  This girl is going to go far in life... she really, really is.

Scrambled Thoughts XIV

*A reader is born from the tears

You don't even know how huge this is. Helping Carson find a love of reading has been enormously complicated and difficult, but after hundreds of book suggestions, thousands of hours, and supreme patience, the spark has finally caught.  I wouldn't say we're at the bonfire level, but at least there is a sustainable fire going.  He was one of only a handful of 2nd graders that won a trophy for reading the most (and by 'win a trophy' what they meant was 'get your name put on the paper trophy on the wall'.  A rather disappointing realization at the end of the year when no physical trophy came. He had to work blastedly hard for it, and if ever a thing deserved a trophy... anyway).

McKenzie has an unquenchable love for reading and was heads and shoulders above the second place kid in the entire school with her score.  She'll pick up anything.  Novels, magazines, picture books, cereal boxes... if it has words, she'll read them and soak in them like a hot bath.

Carson doesn't understand this.  "Why do you always have a book, Kenzie?" he asked one afternoon when he wanted to chat with her during snack time.  "Because I like them," she replied.
"Carson, you're starting to like books too now, right?" I plugged
"Yeah - but not all the time.  If I read all the time I get really bored."  That's where the look above came from.

*It's not every day you step into your bedroom to grab a laundry basket and find yourself standing in a puddle of water.

And it's quite disheartening to turn your head and realize that the puddle you're standing in goes on, and on, and on.  Upon further investigation, I found that Teek had tried to flush an entire roll of toilet paper down the toilet.  But not down the toilet in the bathroom pictured above... no, it was from the toilet that is behind where I'm standing, around the corner, and down the hall a bit.  There was so. much. water.  This kid has brought new meaning to the phrase 'terrible twos' for me.

*Plus, he believes that he is capable of doing all the things that ever there were.

He can do many of them, I admit.  It just takes a long time, and a lot of patience.  "Nomee," he says five thousand three hundred and twenty seven times.  No me.  I want to do it.  "nomee, nomee, nomee."

*His head strong and insistent personality made potty training at 2 years and 3 months a snap.

I was nowhere close to potty training him (he was barely 2, and we were getting ready to move, for heaven's sake!), but he started showing such interest, and my wise mother-in-law pointed out one afternoon that, given his head strong nature, if I missed this window of opportunity he was giving me, I might not get another one until he was five years old.  I let this stew for a few days and saw her point.  If Timothy didn't want to be potty trained, there would be no convincing him of it.  And so, we gave it a try.  And three days later I was shocked at how easy it had been.  Hooray for no diapers!

*Turns out that the desert knows how to do spring if you look for it.

*But then, you turn around and realize that Target is selling little pots of grass as a SuperFun thing.  

Look kids!  Buy this and you can watch something grow!

*The three-day rainy season was fun this year.

Though, Teek didn't really understand the idea behind the umbrella we gave him.

Happy Miles.

*As much as I would have liked the spring to stick around for a bit longer, summer did come.

And we tote the waterbottles around all day every day to prove it.

Wizard of Oz

"Mama! Mama! They're doing a drama club at school and I really want to do it!"

So that is how we ended up with front row tickets to the elementary school's production of The Wizard of Oz.

She was so incredible.  Really, truly!  She was!  I mean, really, I knew she would be because she's McKenzie and is really great in almost everything... but she surprised me with just how incredible she was.  Can you guess her character?

She danced around on that stage like she owned the place and got some pretty hearty laughs in the process.  Her solo was absolutely delightful to watch... which was a good thing because after having the blasted thing stuck on repeat in our brains for more than a month, I worried that that would not be the case.

While she was choreographing the dance one night to her solo (all by her little 5th grade self), she mentioned to me that she was going to slide on her knees with jazz hands splayed at the end of the song.  In my head I thought it was a bad idea because it seemed a little too dramatic.  So I tried to talk her out of it.  But she would not be swayed.

And she was entirely right.  That was one of the best parts of the whole show and caught the audience by just enough surprise that they laughed - - - every time.

There was something about watching her up there... she seemed so grown-up.  I watched her through the months of practice work on her own to develop this character.  She invested a lot of herself into it, and it meant something to her.  So, then, to see her up there feeling accomplished and proud of herself was one of the best parenting moments I've had yet.  She felt so successful.  She was successful - - - and it made my heart almost break with happiness.

Grandma flew down just to see her.  She always wanted a theatrical or musical family... but her own kids were much more passionate about sports.  So she has a lot of hope in McKenzie.

This next picture is so symbolic to me.  Each main character was double cast, since there were so many kids interested in performing.  One cast acted through act one, and the other cast acted through act two.  McKenzie is the Scarecrow in the Shadows, furthest on the left, in the dark. See her?

For some reason, I love this picture.  McKenzie shined like a star while the spotlight was on her, but when it came to fighting her way to center stage for the curtain call, she was completely satisfied hanging on the outskirts and letting the other characters have the limelight.  She's like that in lots of areas of her life - and is awesome that way.

A week after the show had closed, I happened to walk by our wall of backpacks and this sight caught my heart in my throat.

I know this will go down in McKenzie's archives as one of the happiest memories of her childhood.  She worked so hard, she nailed it, and she had so. much. fun. In fact, she just came in to bring me a glass of water, five months after the performances, saw one of the pictures in this post and left the room skipping, with her arms extended out to her sides, and singing all the way down the stairs,

"And my head I'd be scratchin'
while my thoughts were busy hatchin'
If I onlyyyyyyyyyyyy HAD A BRAAAAAAAAIN!"

Soccer and Holidays

This awesome kid rocked the soccer last spring.  Something about his hair made him look the part.  I can just see him running around in a soccer jersey on television, can't you?  He looked pretty awesome out there.

Especially when he was measuring distant things with the space inbetween his fingers. A new favorite hobby.

Also, I usually don't pay much attention to the coaches, but this one was just so darn handsome that I couldn't keep my eyes off of him.

Doesn't he look all coach-y?

Guys!  Save the flower and nose picking until after the game!

The Scorchers.  They lost almost all of their games.  But they sure had fun.

Also, Easter happened again this year.

Teek thought he had landed in a dream.  CANDY?!

Every time I looked at Miles, he was either stuffing candy into his mouth, or posing like this for me.

Something about looking through the basket handle was incredibly addicting.

What a great bunch of kids.  They make this mama heart so happy.

Speaking of my mama heart, my favorite part of Mother's Day?  This paper that came home from school:

The funniest thing about it is that, if you look really closely, you can see that he actually wrote 39 in the slot next to pounds first.  And then took the time to erase it to make a better prediction.

I'll miss these years.